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Hands-on Lab: MySQL Storage Engines and System Tables

Estimated time needed: 25 minutes

In this lab, you will use the MySQL Command Line Interface (CLI) to carry out a variety of functions related to selecting and
understanding some of the alternative storage engines available in MySQL. You will then continue on to explore the system tables in
MySQL which contain meta data about the objects in the server.

Objectives
After completing this lab, you will be able to use the MySQL command line interface to:

• Create tables using alternative storage engines.

• Query MySQL system tables to retrieve meta data about objects in the database.

Software and Database Used in this lab

Software Used in this Lab
In this lab, you will use MySQL. MySQL is a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) designed to efficiently store,
manipulate, and retrieve data.

To complete this lab you will utilize the MySQL relational database service available as part of the IBM Skills Network Labs (SN Labs)
Cloud IDE. SN Labs is a virtual lab environment used in this course.

Database Used in this Lab

The World database used in this lab comes from the following source: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/world-setup/en/ under CC BY 4.0
License with Copyright 2021 - Statistics Finland.

You will use a modified version of the database for the lab, so to follow the lab instructions successfully please use the database
provided with the lab, rather than the database from the original source.

The following ERD diagram shows the schema of the World database:

The first row is the table name, the second is the primary key, and the remaining items are any additional attributes.

Exercise 1: Create your database

1. Go to Skills Network Toolbox by clicking the icon shown below from the side by side launched Cloud IDE.

2. From the Databases drop down menu, click MySQL to open the MySQL service session tab.

3. Click the Createe button and wait until MySQL service session gets launched.

The MySQL server will take a few moments to start. Once it is ready, you will see the green “Active” label near the top of the window.

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Scroll down and copy the password.

• NOTE: Whenever you are required to enter your MySQL service session password from the MySQL service session tab at any
step of the lab, copy the password by clicking on the small copy button on the right of the password block. Paste the password
into the terminal using Ctrl + V (Mac: ⌘ + V), and press Enter on the keyboard. For security reasons, you will not see the
password as it is entered on the terminal.

4. Click New Terminal button from the mysql service session tab. Now you need to fetch two mysql script files to the Cloud IDE
user session storage. Copy the command below by clicking on the little copy button on the bottom right of the codeblock. Then
paste it into the terminal at the command line prompt using Ctrl + V (Mac: ⌘ + V), and Enter on keyboard. Do this for each of
the commands below one at a time.

◦ world_mysql_script.sql
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1. wget https://cf-courses-data.s3.us.cloud-object-storage.appdomain.cloud/IBM-DB0231EN-SkillsNetwork/datasets/World/world_mysql_script.sql
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5. Initiate a mysql command prompt session by clicking the MySQL CLI button from the mysql service session tab.

6. Create a new database world using the command below in the terminal:
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1. CREATE DATABASE world;
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image

7. To use the newly created world database, use the command below in the terminal:
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1. USE world;
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8. Execute the world mysql script (world_mysql.sql) to complete the world database creation process using the command below in
the terminal:
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1. SOURCE world_mysql_script.sql;
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9. To list all the table names from the world database, use the command below in the terminal:
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1. SHOW TABLES;
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Exercise 2: Manage MySQL Storage Engines

In MySQL, Storage Engines are components that handle SQL operations for different table types. The default and most general
purpose storage engine in MySQL is InnoDB. When you create a new table in MySQL using the CREATE TABLE command in the Command
Line Interface, it creates a InnoDB table by default. This is the most widely useful one and is recommended for most general
applications except for a few specialized cases.

As detailed in the MySQL documentation, MySQL is built with a pluggable storage engine architecture that allows storage engines to
be easily loaded into and unloaded from a running MySQL server.

1. To see a list of the Storage Engines supported on your MySQL server, enter the following command into the MySQL Command

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Line Interface:
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1. SHOW ENGINES;
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SHOW ENGINES CLI command output

As you can see, there are several columns. The first column gives the name of the Storage Engine and the next column tells us
whether that engine is supported on your MySQL server. As you can see, the InnoDB engine is listed as the DEFAULT.

The CSV Storage Engine

From the SHOW ENGINES; command you ran earlier, you can see that the CSV Engine is supported on the current running MySQL server.
CSV files, short for Comma Separated Values, are delimited text files that uses a comma to separate values.

Let’s go ahead and try making a table in our database using the CSV storage engine.

2. To create a new table with a storage engine other than the default InnoDB database, we specify the storage engine we wish to use
inside the CREATE TABLE command. Let’s create a new table called “test_csv” using the CSV engine by entering the following
command into the CLI:
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1. CREATE TABLE csv_test (i INT NOT NULL, c CHAR(10) NOT NULL) ENGINE = CSV;
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3. Let’s confirm that the table was successfully created with the following command:
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1. SHOW TABLES;
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Output of SHOW TABLES command

4. let’s add some sample data into our table. We will add three entries with the following command:
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1. INSERT INTO csv_test VALUES(1,'data one'),(2,'data two'),(2,'data three');
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5. Take a look at the new values you entered with the CLI:
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1. SELECT * FROM csv_test;
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See contents of CSV table

As you can see, CSV storage engines function in many of the same ways as the default InnoDB engines, however, there are a few
limitations. These include not supporting indexing or partitioning.

As you saw for yourself from the output of the SHOW ENGINES; command there are many different storage engines. We encourage you to
explore and experiment with them yourself! You can read more about their specific use cases and limitations in the MySQL
documentation.

Exercise 3: Navigate the MySQL System Tables

The MySQL server contains a database called mysql. This is the system database that contains information required for the server to
run, such as meta data on all the other tables in the database. This database is one of the special cases where the default InnoDB
storage engine is not used. Instead, the tables in the mysql database used the MyISAM storage engine. In general, we mostly query the
system tables and rarely modify them directly.

The tables in the mysql database fall into several categories, some of which include:

• Grant System Tables

• Object Information System Tables
• Log System Tables
• Server-Side Help System Tables

For your reference, an exhaustive list of the categories can be found in Section 5.7 of the MySQL documentation.

Grant System Table Category

Let’s take a deeper look at the Grant System Table category. They contain information about the user accounts and the privileges
granted to them.

1. First, let’s see all the databases on the MySQL server by entering the following command into the CLI:
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1. SHOW DATABASES;
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The databases on the server

2. Now connect to the mysql data by entering:

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1. USE mysql;
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3. Take a look at all the tables in the database by entering the following in the CLI:
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1. SHOW TABLES;
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4. The user table contains user accounts, global privileges, and other nonprivilege columns. There are many columns in this table
and is a little unwieldy to look at so let’s take a look at just the first column which lists the names of the users in the database.
Enter the following into the CLI:
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1. SELECT User from user;
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User column in user database

5. Let’s add a new user to the database and see if the change is reflected in the user table. We will go into depth about adding users
to a database later in the course in the Hands-on Lab: MySQL User Management, Access Control, and Encryption but for now,
we’ll just execute a simple command in the CLI that will create a new user named “test_user”:
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1. CREATE USER test_user;
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6. Try it yourself: Confirm that the user table in the mysql database was automatically updated to reflect the addition of the new
user you created. Enter the appropriate command into the CLI to show the the User column in the user table.

▸ Hint (Click Here)

▸ Solution (Click Here)

Query the INFORMATION_SCHEMA Database Tables

The INFORMATION_SCHEMA is a database found inside every MySQL server. It contains meta data about the MySQL server such as the name
of a database or table, the data type of a column, or access privileges. Note that this database contains read-only tables, so you cannot
directly use any INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE commands on them. Let’s go ahead and connect to the database.

1. TRY IT YOURSELF: Using the MySQL CLI, view all the databases on the server.

▸ Hint (Click Here)

▸ Solution (Click Here)

2. Try it yourself: Enter the relevant command in the CLI to connect to the information_schema database.

▸ Hint (Click Here)

▸ Solution (Click Here)

3. In the information_schema database, there exists a table called COLUMNS which contains meta data about the columns for all tables and
views in the server. One of the columns in this table contains the names of all the other columns in every table. Let’s go ahead
and look at the names of the columns in the country table in the world database by entering the following command in the CLI:
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1. SELECT COLUMN_NAME FROM COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'country';
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Column names in country table

4. Another point of interest in the information_schema database is the TABLES table which contains meta data about all the tables in the
server. One of the columns in this table contains information about a table’s storage engine type. To tie this back to our earlier
discussion about storage engines, run the following command in the CLI to view the storage engine type for the ‘country’, ‘city’,
‘countrylanguage’, and finally the ‘csv_test’ table you created:
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1. SELECT table_name, engine FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
2. WHERE table_name = 'country' OR table_name = 'city'
3. OR table_name = 'countrylanguage' OR table_name = 'csv_test';
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Engine type of tables of interest

As expected, the first three tables mentioned use the default InnoDB storage engine, while the ‘csv_test’ table uses the CSV
storage engine.

5. Finally, the TABLES table in the information_schema database contains information on the the size of a given table in bytes. This
information is stored in two columns: data_length and index_length which stores the size of the data in the table and the size of
the index file for that table, respectively. Therefore, the total size of the table is the sum of the values in these two columns. This
value would be given in bytes, however, if you wish to use a more convenient unit, the sum can be converted to kB by dividing by
1024. You can find the size of the tables (in kB) you queried in the previous step with the following command in the CLI:
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1. SELECT table_name, (data_length + index_length)/1024 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
2. WHERE table_name = 'country' OR table_name = 'city'
3. OR table_name = 'countrylanguage' OR table_name = 'csv_test';
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Results of table size query

Exercise 4: Try it Yourself!

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In this practice exercise, you will put together what you learned about storage engines in MySQL to first create a new table using the
non-default MyISAM storage engine. You will then apply what you learned about MySQL System Tables to fetch metadata about your
newly created table.

1. Try it yourself: First, connect to the world database using the CLI:

▸ Hint (Click Here)

▸ Solution (Click Here)

2. Try it yourself: Create a new table called MyISAM_test that uses the MYISAM storage engine.

▸ Hint (Click Here)

▸ Solution (Click Here)

3. Try it yourself: Next, you’ll want to query a table in the information_schema database, but before that, you’ll have to connect to the
database first. Use the CLI to connect to the information_schema database.

▸ Hint (Click Here)

▸ Solution (Click Here)

4. Try it yourself: Using the CLI, query the TABLES table in the information_schema database to display the table_name and engine columns
of all tables that have table_schema = 'world'. Confirm that the table you created in this exercise is there and it has the correct
storage engine.

▸ Hint (Click Here)

▸ Solution (Click Here)

Conclusion
Congratulations! You have completed this hands on lab and now understand the basics of MySQL storage engines and have the skills
to create new tables with alternate storage engines for specialized use cases. Furthermore, you have gained some familiarity with
system tables in MySQL and how to query them to retrieve meta data about other objects in your database.

Author
• David Pasternak

Other Contributors
• Sandip Saha Joy

© IBM Corporation 2023. All rights reserved.

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